From a writers’ point of view, I have been blessed insofar as I’ve never really been at a loss for ideas for my novels. That said, it has gotten me into trouble because, in truth, they are good but sometimes half-baked ideas. In my enthusiasm I pitch these ideas to publishers, who grab hold. Then I have to give good literary life to those ill-formed notions. So far, so good.

When I first suggested my idea for the story of Oliver Cromwell Pitts (at that point unnamed) to my editor at Algonquin, to the best of my recollection the basic idea was to tell the tale of a kid in early 18th Century England who gets caught up in Britain’s horrendous legal system and is transported (by way of punishment) to the American colonies. This was accepted, with the proposal that I write a TWO-book story. You may learn of the evolution of the book in the blog I posted here on February 27, 2018.

What I did not relate in that posting was a vital fact. Somewhere in the course of writing “Pitts 1,” as we came to call it, I got it into my head that this was to be a THREE book series. So, I sent in the first book, which ended (in that iteration) when Oliver discovers his beloved sister is a common pickpocket.

In turn, the editor kindly referred me to my contract, which I surely had read and signed, that stated quite clearly that this was to be a TWO-book project.

Did it matter? Well yes. Speaking for myself, having written for many years, I have developed an inner sense of how long a book needs to be, and thereby pace the text accordingly. I was brought up short that this book was, well, short. I needed it to be a fair bit longer. Moreover, at that point I had not fully thought out how this book should end.

Back to work.

To put it metaphorically, it was as if I had decided to climb a mountain, only to discover (as I hiked) that the mountain had two summits, the second one the real summit, and much higher. You get to the first summit, breathe a sigh of relief and relax. Then you notice you haven’t truly gotten to the top. That’s common enough here in the Rocky Mountains where I live, but not in my literary life, where I work.

I got back to the book. It proved to have one big advantage. I now needed to think firmly how the second book’s plot would evolve. In this fashion book one and two were effectively blended. I think one might read the two books back-to-back, and not miss a beat. In fact, if a writer’s view is to be considered, the full story of Oliver Cromwell Pitt’s life (The Unexpected life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts, and The End of the World and Beyond), is much more entertaining to read, if you read them one right after the other.

History, you’ve no doubt heard it said a million times, is written by the winners. But what if you could find out what happened to the losers?

If one is going to write historical fiction, it seems fair to assume one needs to read history. And if one does reads history—as I do—you wonder about the stories of the so-called underdogs, those small, and sometime very large tales which are shoved into the darkness by the bright light of triumphant torches.

Those stories are what interest me and what I’ve come to write about.

Thus, The Fighting Ground, a momentary (but true) tale of the American Revolution, of little importance save to the people who lived and died in that small skirmish in New Jersey.

Thus, Sophia’s War, which in large part is about the plight of the huge numbers of American soldiers who, taken prisoner by the British, were most cruelly held and, in the main, forgotten. (Though there is a monument to the many who died, a monument championed into creation by Walt Whitman).

The Player King is about a 15th Century boy—about whom very little is known—who claimed the kingship of England against an oppressive monarchy and was actually crowned as such in Ireland, only to have his cause fall to pieces in The Battle of Trent. Another true tale.

a tobacco field

Then there are the 18th century colonies of Virginia and Maryland. This area, around Chesapeake Bay came to be known as the Tobacco Coast. It was where the American economy first became both successful and international. The point is, most of the labor who worked this tobacco economy were not free.

That was because in the early 17th century it was England’s transported felons and indentured servants who made up much of the labor force there. It continued into the 18th century and has come to be called white slavery. We are referencing about fifty thousand people, men, women, and children.

It soon shifted to Black slavery. Either way, it was slavery.

That is the essential narrative subject of The End of the World and Beyond. A white boy, Oliver Cromwell Pitts, is caught up by the British legal system, transported to America—to the Tobacco Coast—as a felon. How does he get there? He is bought, but by whom? How does he live? How does he interact with Black slavery? Does he, can he, will he escape, when the local community is well organized to track down any escaped slave, white or black?

Where do Oliver and his fellow African slave Bara flee? More about that anon, in another post. Do I have to tell you, there’s not a great deal written about that.

In the Thirteen American colonies, ten years prior to the Revolution, there was what was known as the Stamp Act crisis, which, in Boston in particular, brought forth that iconic cry.

By representation it was meant there was no American seated in the British Parliament.

“The Repeal or the Funeral of Miss Ame. -Stamp”

“New Hampshire: Stamp Master in Effigy”

“But,” according to historian Brian Deming, “the idea never gained traction in Britain.” As one British critic of the time wrote: “Shall we live to see the spawn of our Transports occupy the highest seats in our Commonwealth? Degenerate Britons! How can ye entertain the humiliating thought!”

The key word here is “Transport.” It references the many thousands of transported felons who had been shipped to the colonies for forced labor by way of punishment in the 18th Century.

During the 18th Century, England became a center of great wealth and mass poverty. Crime against property became commonplace. In reaction, the British government enacted harsh laws to punish minor and major offenders—a collection of laws that collectively came to be known as “The Bloody Codes.” One major punishment was transportation, by which children, women, and men were sent to British American colonies and sold into forced labor.

At the time of the Revolution there was a colonial population of two million. Some fifty thousand were (or had been) these transported felons. (Hence the quote cited above.) It had become a business. It was 1619 when the first Africans were brought to America as slaves. There was a time when enslaved whites and blacks labored together.

Booklist reviewed the book thus: “Though darker than its predecessor, this sequel is equally fine. The plotting is altogether laudable, the setting beautifully realized, and the characters highly empathetic. Especially good is the voice Avi has conjured for Oliver, just antique enough to evoke eighteenth century diction and syntax. One thing is certain: it may be the end of the world but there is no end to the pleasure Avi’s latest evokes.”

As a matter of personal pleasure and interest I read American and British history. Consider; from 1497, when John Cabot, the Venetian navigator and explorer, touched the coast of Newfoundland and claimed North America for England (and King Henry VII) our two national histories were intertwined.

In 18th Century England, as today, crime—or what was/is defined as crime—was rampant as masses of poor people grew poorer, and the relatively few wealthy folks, grew richer. Part of the pushback was on the other side. Thus, Johnathan Wilde became a master criminal.

In response, the British government created “The Bloody Codes,” draconian legal measures to deal with criminals. Hanging in London, or transportation to the colonies for enforced labor, was part of the response.

In the early days of our written history the number of transported felons was claimed to be few. “Five thousand,” said Thomas Jefferson. More recent historians have proved otherwise. Indeed, something more than fifty thousand were shipped to the Americas. Among those sent over were children, (boys and girls) who were treated as common criminals when they broke the law. They too were transported. Large numbers were sent to the Caribbean Islands. Even more were sent to Maryland and Virginia, which came to be known as “The Tobacco Coast,” tobacco being the first successful economic staple of the southern colonies.

The plight of transported felons, as I learned, was also deeply entwined with Afro-American slavery, and all the cruelties involved, and the way so many slaves sought to free themselves in remarkable ways.

I have also long been a reader, with pleasure, of Eighteenth Century British literature, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett.

Put all these elements together, and it’s almost easy to see how the lives, voices, and plots of The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts—and The End of the World and Beyond—came into my head. There is something from all of the above in these books.

That said, I came to the creation of the story backward. My initial goal was to write about young transported felons. That led to my asking who might be such English persons? How did they become caught up by the English law? In what condition would they have been transported? And, of course, what would be their fate in America? Did any of them regain their freedom?

The history of white slaves in America—which is what the transported English, Irish, and Scotch felons truly were—is not usually a given part of American history. It should be. It’s awful. It’s also quite extraordinary.

While The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts—and the newly published continuation, The End of the World and Beyond—will give you an inkling of generally unknown history, my goal has been, as always, to write page-turning adventures. Let me assure you, Oliver Cromwell Pitts is a different kind of American hero.

In the long process of publishing, I have always loved the moment when the first “proofs” of a book arrive on my desk. Strictly speaking a proof means, “Something that proves a statement; evidence or argument establishing a fact or the truth of anything, or belief in the certainty of something; an instance of this.” (Oxford Unabridged Dictionary) In the world of publishing, however, the term means. “A trial or preliminary impression of a printed text, taken to be checked for errors and marked for correction before subsequent revision or final printing.”

First used in 1602, the correlation between the two words is clear enough: The proofs of a book prove that you have written a book.

It is perfectly true that in a world of computing, I could make my writing appear as published text. And I have no doubt, these proofs (these days) were probably set down by a computer.

That said, feeling that I have printed text in my hand is very satisfying. I have been working on this book, The End of the World and Beyond, which is the sequel to The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts, for more than a year. It now sits upon my desk.

Never mind that I am halfway into writing a new book. That book being at the moment, difficult to write, it’s a pleasure to turn to something done. Done is easy.

And yet…

My job is to read the proofs and discover what is wrong.

What if I come upon pages that don’t read well? Pages, paragraphs, and sentences that are illogical in plot, character, or pace?

I send a note to the publisher to change things.

So the book isn’t truly, really finished. (I was once reading the proof of a book only to discover half a chapter had been inadvertently dropped out.)

That said, to have the proofs of a book is to be given a new set of eyes. My book looks, feels, reads differently than it has before.

But mind, it is not, by any stretch, solely my book. Editors, copyeditors, readers (including my wife) have all weighed in. Sometimes heavily.

Also, a designer has designed the look of the book, which is of vital importance.

The names of these people are almost never among the proofs.

In any case, there are more months to go before readers read it. Recall, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of the book is in the reading.

Poe is generally credited with having invented the detective tale with his short story, Murders in the Rue Morgue. (1841) That story, profoundly influential, also came to be known as a “Locked Room Mystery.” Which is to say something happens in a room that is presumably inaccessible.

Well, I thought, living as I was on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, what could be more of a “Locked Room” than a sailing ship at sea?

If you turn to page 129 of The Man Who Was Poe, you will find these words by a character named Captain Elias:

“Now, Master Edmund, if you’ve time to hear a good yarn, I’ve one for you. You see, The Lady Liberty had a sister ship. Seahawk, her name was—”

When I wrote those words, it was the beginning of my thinking of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle: I would write a “locked room” mystery set on a 19th Century sailing ship. I even signed the contract to write a book which, for the moment, was called The Seahawk.

But I didn’t begin the book. The first problem was that for about eight months, I moved to Venice, Italy. My wife had a sabbatical; and a former editor of mine offered a Venetian apartment. I could not resist.

Indeed Venice was a fabulous experience.

However, I had not reckoned on two things. Being surrounded by the Italian language (or the Venetian version of it) meant that I was, to my great surprise, radically hampered in my writing. It crimped my rhythms, made my English excessively formal and ornate, and stunted my vocabulary. Also, this being in the early days of portable computers, my access to a printer was once a week. A key part of my writing process was missing.

I stopped writing the book. All I could do was think about it.

Only when I returned to Providence did I resume writing and by then the book had become The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It also began as a mystery, and while it has elements of that, it traveled on to become something rather different.

The book was done (I thought) when editor Richard Jackson called. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We missed something. When Charlotte leaves the boat after the voyage, she doesn’t say goodbye to the crew. That’s out of character.”

Which is to say, since I had written the ending, I knew she would return to the ship. But at the narrative moment, she did not. Only then did I write that farewell scene on page 199. When the character Ewing says, “You’re my mermaid now,” I had tears in my eyes because like so many readers, I too had fallen in love with Charlotte ,,, but it was time for me to say “bon voyage.”

Will I write a sequel? The short answer is, no. My reason: Countless readers have told me how important Charlotte has been to them. The importance has to do with Charlotte’s growth and move toward independence. If I said what Charlotte did with her life, I think it would diminish her release to an open world. I’d rather let every reader choose what Charlotte does, even as I hope they will choose what they do with their lives.

This summer and early fall, I’m re-posting the 10 Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories from this blog. I’ve rewritten each essay somewhat and included the most-often-asked question about the book.

As we continue our countdown, Nothing But the Truth is #2 on the most-read list, my 24th book and a Newbery Honor winner in 1992. Although it was written 26 years ago, many people tell me that it is especially relevant today.

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Nothing but the Truth came to be written because of a series of seemingly unrelated experiences.

To begin: In my college playwriting days I became very interested in a Depression era play form called “Living Newspapers.” These were theatre pieces which, for a plot, tried to teach the audience about something, mostly the current events of the day. The productions used all kinds of teaching/theatre techniques, memos, speeches, charts on screens, trying to inform the audience as to what was happening. They were, if you will, documentary plays.

I even tried to write a living newspaper. About education. Not very good.

Now jump to my interest in games, board games, which I played with my boys. Monopoly® comes to mind. And in particular the mystery game, Clue®.

One day, while wandering through a flea market I came upon a unique boxed mystery game. In the box was all the evidence for a murder case. Detective reports. Photographs. Transcripts of interviews. And so on. There was even an envelope which contained a cigarette stub with lipstick on it! The idea being you went through all this evidence (what lawyers call “discovery”) and then you tried to figure out who the criminal was. A sealed envelope was included which gave the villain’s name. Very cool, indeed.

A few years later I came across the same game, but now, all the evidence was put together in book format. There even was an image of that cigarette stub. This showed me that one could put that entire “discovery” file together so that it made a book. The narrative was merely the sequence of documents.

At the same time I was, in my capacity as an author, making many school visits. Spend a lot of time in a school that way, and you pass a fair number of hours in the teachers’ room. Amazing what you hear there, especially since not everyone knew who I was.

Finally, I read a newspaper story about a kid who refused to sing The Star Spangled Banner in a schoolroom, and the local uproar it caused.

Put all this together, and I hope you can see how Nothing But The Truth evolved. Not beside the point, the original title of the book was Discovery. And the half title of the book was: A Documentary Novel.

The book was written very quickly, much faster than my normal time. I wrote it so fast that I wondered if it was making any sense. That’s why I sent the first half of it to my editor, Richard Jackson. I asked him if the book was working and should I continue.

This summer and early fall, I’m re-posting the 10 Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories from this blog. I’ve rewritten each essay somewhat and included the most-often-asked question about the book.

As we continue our countdown, Something Upstairs is #3 on the most-read list, my 20th book.

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I was living in Los Angeles, one of the USA’s newest cities. I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, one of the USA’s oldest cities. The city is like a museum of early American architecture. It was rather like traveling back in time.

The Providence house I moved into was a charming old one, built in 1835.

The top floor was an attic that had been converted into an apartment. It had old wooden floors, and in the back was a small room. It had a stain on the floor.

I began to wonder who had lived in my house a long time ago.

I started to read about Providence history.

I was visiting a school somewhere. A teacher took me aside and said, “I have a student who says it’s urgent that he talk to you alone. I don’t know what it’s about. But he’s very insistent. Could you spare a few moments?”

My curiosity piqued I said, “Sure.” I was led into a small office and there was a boy sitting there fiddling with a key chain. I sat down, introduced myself, and said, “I understand you want to talk to me.” He said. “I just wanted to say hello.” That was it. He had no more to say. But the moment becomes a key part of my book. It’s very believable because, in part, it is true.

I put all of this together and wrote a ghost story set in the house.
See point 3.

I had written the book, but had no title. On another school visit, I read the beginning of the book to a class. They liked it. Then I said, “I have no title for it. Anybody have a suggestion?” A girl raised her hand. She said, “Why don’t you call it Something Upstairs?”

Done.

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Most often asked question:

“What parts of the story are true?”

If you would like to see the house where I set this story, go to Google Maps, and request a look at 15 Sheldon Street, Providence R.I.

This summer, I’m re-posting the 10 Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories from this blog. I’ve rewritten each essay somewhat and included the most-often-asked question about the book.

As we continue our countdown, this book is #4 on the most-read list, my 11th book.

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Many people are fascinated by maps. I knew a serious book collector who built a large library of books which were selected because they had maps in them. For example, Treasure Island, famously, has a map in it. Indeed, it’s said that Stevenson drew the map for his step-son first, and then wrote the book.

I too like maps, and so, back in the day when I working as a librarian, I was intrigued when a new atlas came into the reference collection. To my great delight it was an atlas of fantasy lands. A wonderfully clever idea, it was fun to see maps of, not just Treasure Island, but the lands of Oz, the Thousand-acre Woods, and so on.

As I was going through the book I realized an important map was missing: the chessboard from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. That was the beginning of my thinking of the book which became Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?

My notion was to write a mystery in which the essential clues were to be found in the maps of well-known children’s books—books which had been stolen from the Checkertown, Ohio Library. When I first wrote the book it was to be a sequel to my first novel, No More Magic. It didn’t quite work, so I revised it heavily, and it became this book.

When an innocent Becky has been accused of stealing The Wizard of Oz, she and her twin brother Toby need to track down the real thief, and find a hidden treasure, using story maps as essential clues. (Hint: a checkerboard and a chessboard are identical) And, if it brought my readers to The Wind in the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh, the Oz books, Treasure Island, and Through the Looking Glass, so much the better.

In short, Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? is a book about books brought into my head by yet another book. That’s what happens when the writer is also a librarian.

Curious fact: There is a moment in the story when Becky and Toby are in the library and become frightened when someone suddenly appears. As written, Toby stands behind Becky. This was the moment the publisher chose for a cover illustration, but they put a much older looking Toby in front of Becky. When I complained, subsequent editions shifted the characters’ positions.

This summer, I’m re-posting the 10 Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories from this blog. I’ve rewritten each essay somewhat and included the most-often-asked question about the book.

As we continue our countdown, this book is #5 on the most-read list, my 21st book.

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Sometimes Book A leads to Book B. Such was the case for The Man Who Was Poe.

My post, about Something Upstairs, mentions how I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, and how, once there, I began to read about local history.

While doing that I learned that Edgar Allen Poe had important connections to the city: He was trying to get married. Indeed, there is a photograph of him-often replicated—that was taken in Providence. The moment is a key part of the book.

When I first wrote Something Upstairs, which deals with time travel, I had my hero travel back to different moments of Providence history. At one such moment, he meets Poe. That multi-time plot structure however, did not work well, and I discarded the multiple times, and kept the story in one time zone.

Nevertheless, I had, so to speak met Poe. Moreover, he was (is) fascinating.

Therefore, when Something Upstairs was completed, I turned to Poe. It was enormously helpful that many of the places that Poe visited when he was in Providence, still stand. I could not just visit them, but walk the story almost in its entirety. You too, can do that, too.

Odd Fact #1. Part of the story involves a coded letter. Poe, who had been an editor, used printer’s marks for the code that appears in his book, The Gold Bug. I used the same code for an important moment in my book. When the printer of The Man Who Was Poe saw that code, he thought it was gobbledy-gook, and stripped it from the book. I discovered this when looking at the first printing of the book. I called my editor (Richard Jackson) Stop press!

Edgar Allan Poe’s code derived from printer’s marks for The Gold Bug

A new page had to be printed, and the entire first printing was recalled and had a new tipped in page with the correct code.

Odd Fact #2. By the time this project first was put together, I had become friends with the artist, David Macaulay, the illustrator and writer. A Providence resident, he was teaching illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. I asked him if he would do illustrations for the Man Who Was Poe.

Initially he agreed, but subsequently changed his mind. It is fun to think how the book would have looked if he had done illustrations.

But never mind, Mr. Macaulay won’t disappear from these stories. Stay tuned.

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Most often asked question:

“How much of the story is true?”

Poe was in Providence, Rhode Island at this time, and he was courting a woman whom he hoped to marry. He did have his photograph taken as related in the book. Whenever you see a photo of Poe, it is that image you are seeing. It’s the only one there is.

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